Depending on what direction the light is come from, (looks like the front) add some shadows to give some depth. The different sets of leaves kinda just tangle into each other.

Another thing to keep in mind is the color palette. Create a palette that is the most common colors you use and keep to it as it will keep everything in the same style/tone. Right now you grass clashes slightly with the trees color.

Thats so awsome.Your game keeps getting more beautiful, It already looks very playable.Do these ores spark like they suggest, or are the sparks part of the image?

A few suggestions:The tree leaves still look a little cloned, maybe you should distort them randomly or create some more diffrent samples (use more colors of green).The world looks very cool and 3-Dimensional, however the grass breaks the illusion, its to much evenly distributed and its all at the same size and on the foreground.When your sick of drawing you could try to randomize this a little.

Thats so awsome.Your game keeps getting more beautiful, It already looks very playable.Do these ores spark like they suggest, or are the sparks part of the image?

A few suggestions:The tree leaves still look a little cloned, maybe you should distort them randomly or create some more diffrent samples (use more colors of green).The world looks very cool and 3-Dimensional, however the grass breaks the illusion, its to much evenly distributed and its all at the same size and on the foreground.When your sick of drawing you could try to randomize this a little.

- I was messing around with animating the sparklies on the minerals. I'm not that good at animation so that's taking me a while lol. If it becomes to much of a burdon to animate it by hand, I'll probably implement the sparkles into the game and animate them programatically.- The leaves will eventually be animated, so I'm holding off on changing anything on them until then.- I agree on the grass... I'll probably go back and work on that later.

So I asked the guy working on this with me "Should I start trying to implement characters so we can ditch the paper doll guy, or should I work on the user interface?" ... needless to say he wants to ditch the paperdoll guy lol.

So this is my first time trying to do animation... probably going to take me a while since I'm not very fast at my art work, but I thought I'd share the beginnings of an idle animation for a female character

Really coming along I must keep on eye on this. Got to say though that I really respect the animation as I am working on that right now and I basically hit wall after wall. Biggest problem being I only have 15 pixels by 20 pixels to work with.

Really coming along I must keep on eye on this. Got to say though that I really respect the animation as I am working on that right now and I basically hit wall after wall. Biggest problem being I only have 15 pixels by 20 pixels to work with.

15 by 20!? ... that's insane, I don't think I could work with something that small

Move the hips a bit more like in your mock up. Her legs are a little too long. Hands look great tho.

I thought for animating trees/grass. Instead of drawing the tree as one sprite, draw everything in layers each set of leaves as a separate sprite from the trunk and other leaves. Then rotate them back and forth with the anchor point towards the bottom of the set of leaves so it looks like the sway and not just turn. The same with bunches of grass. Have the anchor point at the bottom and then just rotate slightly back and forth to give them movement.

If you want to get all physicsy, you could try and make it so that rotate slightly away from where the character stands so he can "move" through the grass.

Edit: I think the best way to make things sparkle is with particles. You can also do some cool background effects like leaves falling, rain, wind blowing debris, all sorts of stuff. You can also save memory as you will not have as many sprite sheets but it can get costly in java2D once you get over 1-2k particles if you are rendering properly. Now that 1-2k mean 1-2k with all other rendering and this is based off of integrated FX chips.

Move the hips a bit more like in your mock up. Her legs are a little too long. Hands look great tho.

I thought for animating trees/grass. Instead of drawing the tree as one sprite, draw everything in layers each set of leaves as a separate sprite from the trunk and other leaves. Then rotate them back and forth with the anchor point towards the bottom of the set of leaves so it looks like the sway and not just turn. The same with bunches of grass. Have the anchor point at the bottom and then just rotate slightly back and forth to give them movement.

If you want to get all physicsy, you could try and make it so that rotate slightly away from where the character stands so he can "move" through the grass.

Edit: I think the best way to make things sparkle is with particles. You can also do some cool background effects like leaves falling, rain, wind blowing debris, all sorts of stuff. You can also save memory as you will not have as many sprite sheets but it can get costly in java2D once you get over 1-2k particles if you are rendering properly. Now that 1-2k mean 1-2k with all other rendering and this is based off of integrated FX chips.

Hey Stumpy, thanks for the great critique! I agree I need to move her hips more... but her legs are meant to be that long ... I also have the least experience drawing legs lol. I think I also need to animate the hands a bit as her arm is too stiff. I plan on animating the trees and grass and stuff, but I think I'm going to save that for much later.

And i think the idle frames are too motionful (you know, some might consider it SWAG, but i dont swing my arms back and forth when im just standing). Sometimes simpler animations can suit it better, like just having a breathing motion on the character

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